


The Sheer Joy of Knowing

by supermega



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Happy Ending, M/M, minor hurt/comfort, this is set in texas so you better believe they’ve all got southern accents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 10:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23349733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supermega/pseuds/supermega
Summary: He watches Achilles busy himself with poking holes into his eraser and decides that he is no longer the center of his own solar system.or; a collection of milestones.
Relationships: Achilles & Patroclus (Song of Achilles), Achilles/Patroclus (Song of Achilles)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 295





	The Sheer Joy of Knowing

Patroclus is seven years old when his father becomes a murderer.

He doesn’t understand much at the beginning of it all, not really. He just knows that he was at school, and now he’s not, and there’s not much else to say about the situation. He doesn’t know what’s happening until one of the officers (who is very big and scary, but nice to Patroclus) gets down on one knee and explains it. 

“Your father did something very bad,” he says, “and he has to go away for some time. Does your mom live with you, son?”

No, Patroclus explains, she doesn’t. He can’t tell them why, because his dad doesn’t like talking about it. Later, even though he tried his best to keep it a secret, Patroclus hears one of the officers say the words “mentally deficient”. He knows they’re talking about his mom.

When the officers tell him that they’re heading to his house so he can pack up his stuff, he experiences the first bit of shock he’s felt all day. For the first time, he has questions. What will happen to his hamster? Should he pack snacks? Where will he put everything? How long will he be gone?

He wants to ask this, and this, and this, but he doesn’t.

He wants to cry, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he takes the bags he’s given for his things and fills them to the brim. He packs up his clothes, his favorite Hot Wheels, a couple books, his Walkman. Then, he runs into his dad’s room when he’s sure nobody’s looking and throws open the door to the closet, digging until his chubby fingers close upon cool glass. He pulls out his prize and immediately shoves it into one of his bags, careful to leave everything else just as he found it.

He peeks at what he’s stolen after he’s back in the car and sure nobody will make him put it back. It’s a picture of him (grinning, shirt stained) and his mom (smiling, eyes unfocused) in front of a long stretch of sparkling blue water. He doesn’t remember much of the trip (he was only five), but he knows that they were in Greece. He spent most of the trip with his mom by the beach. His dad spent most of the trip talking to his mom’s parents—Patroclus’ grandparents. 

A week after they got home, his mom left.

He hears the word “foster” a lot when they get back to the station. He doesn’t know what it means, and he’s too scared to ask, but he doesn’t think he’ll be going home again anytime soon. He asks one of the officers if somebody will feed his hamster for him, and the man just smiles a big, sad smile.

• • •

Patroclus is nine years old when he meets Achilles.

It’s his sixth home in a third of as many years, so he’s almost used to the feeling that sets into his stomach as he’s driven up to the mansion set to house him for the indefinite future. This is a group home, he’s told. Temporary. He’s a little scared, but not as scared as he used to be. Mostly now he doesn’t feel anything.

He walks up to the big white door and knocks, his ears straining for any tells of what will await him inside. He’s pretty sure he hears the giggles of one, maybe two kids. He hears a dog barking. He hears a radio playing loud music with lyrics he can’t understand. Then the door opens, and a big, kind-looking man greets him warmly and ushers him inside.

The man’s name, he’ll soon come to know, is Peter. He’ll be one of Patroclus’ caretakers, something he is for many, many other boys. None of the guardians have ever adopted any of the boys, he says, that’s not what his home is for, and Patroclus finds a small part of himself appreciating his directness through the sting of his disappointment. He says that he does try to keep some of them until adulthood, but Patroclus doesn’t let himself feel hopeful. He knows he’s not lucky enough for that.

He has not eaten dinner yet, but he doesn’t say anything about it when Peter sends him off to his room to unpack. Unpacking is something he’s grown to enjoy, and he doesn’t want to delay the nice feeling of making his own space. Besides, he’s not hungry.

Later, he learns of Peter’s one biological son. He’s lying in bed in a room housing four other boys in bunk beds like the one he has to himself when he first hears his name, whispered in the darkness. 

Achilles.

It feels like everything the boys say comes back to that name. Achilles gave this boy his apple, and Achilles helped that boy with his math homework. Achilles brought cards for them to play, did you hear? Achilles is going to teach them all how to juggle. He hears the name so many times that he starts to get frustrated. He doesn’t like Achilles, he decides. Then a small part of him feels bad, because he doesn’t even know him.

“Who’s Achilles?” He suddenly asks, his voice shocking the dark room into momentary silence. It only lasts a minute, before answers come hurtling back to him. Achilles is Peter’s son, someone says. He goes to a private school, says another, and he’s the coolest. He’s so fast. He lets all the boys play with his toys, so long as they ask first. He never loses a race. As the praises die down, someone whispers that Achilles chooses which boys get to stay. 

Patroclus hums in understanding and decides he will go to sleep, then. He doesn’t like the angry feeling blooming in his chest, like he wants to punch something. He thinks that he probably wants to punch Achilles. He sleeps.

When he wakes up, it’s Saturday. He stirs with all of the other boys and follows all of their moves closely, tailing them through the long, confusing hallways of the house and eventually finding himself in a gigantic dining room. There’s three long, wooden tables placed in a row with places set for all of the boys, and it’s at the head of the first table where Patroclus first catches a glimpse of Achilles.

His hair is bright blond, and it’s long enough to have to be pulled back from his face with a hair tie. A few strands have escaped anyways, and they frame his face in a pretty way. He’s got freckles across his nose, and ruddy, flushed cheeks without any scars or blemishes. His skin is golden and perfect. Every part of him is golden and perfect.

Patroclus hates him silently, and sits down to eat his food. 

He next sees Achilles after all of the boys have finished their chores and reading for the day. Peter walks him through everything he’ll have to do after breakfast (clean, help prepare lunch, read for at least an hour) and releases him to play outside with the other boys. Patroclus walks a quick lap around the house, then scurries back inside to the room he slept in when nobody’s looking. 

He knows he’s not supposed to be there, but he curls up in his little corner of the room and feels safe anyways. His head falls back to rest against the smooth wall behind him, and he lets himself daydream. He imagines that he’s a racer, then a prince, then a superhero (his favorite daydream). He imagines himself soaring through the clouds, on his way to save his city from big, scary aliens with his bright red cape billowing behind him. He’s big and strong, and nobody can touch him.

He’s heating up his superhero eyes to use his laser beams on an especially ugly alien when the door to the room creaks and his real eyes fly open. All at once he feels guilty, pressing himself back into the corner and staring at the silhouette of the slight boy in the doorway who’s staring back at him with a cocked head. The boy flicks the light on, and Patroclus recognizes him instantly. 

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Achilles says. It’s not an accusation, Patroclus notices, just an observation. He sounds curious.

“I don’t want to play outside,” he responds. 

“You should still be out there. My dad will get mad if he finds out you came back inside early.” He takes a step inside the room and takes in Patroclus from a distance, seeming a little puzzled. “Don’t you want to stay?”

“No. I don’t know,” Patroclus frowns, suddenly annoyed with him. “How did you know I was in here?”

“My room is next door. I heard you talking to yourself through the wall.” His curious expression doesn’t change, even as Patroclus’ cheeks flush with embarrassment and he suddenly pushes himself to his feet.

“Well, if you’re so worried about me, then tell your dad I was inside playing with you,” he snaps, “so he won’t get mad.”

Achilles watches as he folds his arms over his chest, and a small frown appears on his face. “That would be lying.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t like lying to my dad. Come to my room,” he’s already turning towards the door, but his sudden command catches Patroclus off guard.

“What?” He asks, too confused to be prickly anymore.

Achilles tosses his response over his shoulder, already out in the hall. “You can come and play cars with me. That way, you really were playing with me. We won’t be lying when my dad asks about it at lunch.”

Patroclus hesitates, but sees no other option. He doesn’t want to be sent away, he realizes. Not after so little time.

He follows the golden boy into his room.

• • •

Patroclus is fourteen the first time he and Achilles kiss.

He’s been sharing a bunk bed with Achilles for four years now, and he’s used to it. He was transferred to the private school Achilles goes to when he was eleven, and he’s used to that, too. He didn’t play with them much before, but he stops interacting with the other boys in the home altogether once they find out his dad is a murderer.

It’s fine. He’s used to it.

He’s even used to the tug he gets in his gut whenever he catches a glimpse of Achilles in the right light, glowing and beautiful with his face turned towards the setting sun. He’s used to noticing the way Achilles’ nose scrunches with concentration while he’s playing the piano. He’s used to how sweat gathers on his upper lip whenever he watches Achilles dart up and down the football field, too fast to be caught, always laughing and golden.

His mind idles in astronomy and he wonders if the planets closest to the sun ever grimace with the realization of its unrelenting brightness. He wonders if it’s possible to forget that you are so close to something so powerful once you’ve noticed it. He watches Achilles busy himself with poking holes into his eraser and decides that he is no longer the center of his own solar system.

When they get home that day, Achilles proposes a race to the snow cone stand a few blocks away. It’s late April and the Texan heat has not yet fully enveloped them in its oppressive blanket, so Patroclus immediately accepts his challenge and scrambles out the door. He knows he would’ve said yes regardless, just like he knows that Achilles is going to win long before he actually does. He loves it anyways.

Achilles loudly declares his victory upon arrival, laughing as Patroclus crashes into his back a second later and sends them both tumbling further into the tiny concrete lot containing the tinier snow cone shop. They shove each other in turn as they run up to the shop window, then gasp out their orders through breathless laughter. When they get their treats, sticky syrup runs down their tanned fingers and they make shows of licking it off just before it drips onto the concrete. They don’t plan to go anywhere specific, but they end up walking to the park together anyways.

Since their school gets out quite a bit earlier than the public one in town, they have the park mostly to themselves. Patroclus can’t stop grinning, even when he accidentally knocks over Achilles’ mound of shaved ice with his elbow. Even when Achilles flings a cold spoonful of his remaining snow cone at his head. Even when they wrestle each other to the ground in a desperate struggle to dump as much of the slush left in their styrofoam cups on one another as possible.

They tussle until Achilles inevitably pins him, but it doesn’t feel like losing. They’re laughing. Achilles is above him, and he can taste cherry syrup in his mouth, and Achilles’ shiny golden hair is dripping icy grape down his face, and it doesn’t feel like losing. They’re laughing, until they’re not.

They’re frozen for a long moment, staring at each other.

Patroclus sees a whole galaxy in that moment. His galaxy narrows down to a solar system, then to a planet, then to the sun, then to Achilles, then to the way Achilles is looking at him right now. His world blots out when Achilles’ lips eclipse his, and then they’re both just inexperienced teenage boys with clumsy lips and clumsy hands that don’t know how to find their place.

When Patroclus comes up for air, Achilles pulls him right back into his orbit.

• • •

Patroclus is fifteen when he realizes he’s in love, after years of hating himself for a feeling he could not name.

• • •

Patroclus is nineteen when he and Achilles officially move in together. He doesn’t count their shared year in the dorms as Actually Living Together, and he just smiles and shakes his head whenever Achilles tries to argue this point.

• • •

Patroclus is twenty-one when his mother dies and he reads the story of his and his boyfriend’s namesakes in the same week. Achilles holds him while he cries for the first time in many, many years.

• • •

Patroclus is twenty-three when he realizes that he has never been happier. 

Their graduation party is in full swing, and Patroclus is warm with alcohol and laughing as he sways with Achilles on the dance floor. He can’t stop rubbing his thumb over the polished silver band that’s miraculously found its way onto his finger, and Achilles is so, so handsome. He kisses him for the sheer joy of knowing that he can.

He hears the scattered hoots of their friends and it’s all he can do to pull away and hide his face in his fiancé’s chest, laughing. He knows that he’s safe here. He knows that he’s loved, especially when Achilles reaffirms that particular truth in a soft murmur next to his ear. He knows that nobody can take either of those things away from him.

Patroclus is seven years old when his world is lost, and he is twenty-three years old when he finds it again.


End file.
